It was the sixties in small town Illinois, I was a little boy, and was walking to my Granny Bert’s house. She lived a block away, I wasn’t quite halfway there, in front of the Duvall’s house. I used to walk barefoot, till one day I stepped on a dead squirrel’s skull. I still walked […]
From The History Trekker: A bedtime story for a forgetful country …
It was another spring, the night of March 5, 1770, in Boston, which was already a hotbed of unrest against a government which many felt was oppressive. The media is fanning the flames, and when an agent of the government kills an eleven year old boy, tensions escalated. That night in Boston, a private citizen […]
On the beach at Eaton’s Neck, Long Island, Blue Oyster Cult looks to the stars & discovers the origin of storms … the meaning of Astronomy
Author’s Note I started this piece about twelve years ago, when I was living on the north shore of Long Island. I was researching the effect the landscape has on artists, and had long been a fan of Blue Oyster Cult, who once lived and worked in the same area I was then living. I […]
A Christmas ghost story … how a memory and a dream led me to the enchantment of “The Curse of The Cat People”
The Curse of the Cat People, my favorite Christmas movie, is a Christmas ghost story where the ghost is the least frightening character of the film. Instead of horror, the aim of the film is enchantment, though it’s loaded with suspense as well. I must have been ten or eleven, it was Christmas eve and […]
Return to Sleepy Hollow, from an essay by Washington Irving
Sleepy Hollow, a remembrance by Washington Irving is a short article which first appeared in the Knickerbocker Magazine in 1839. Unlike Irving’s more well-known short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Sleepy Hollow is autobiographical in tone. He explored the area as a teenager – a valley of the Pocantico River near Tarrytown, New York, […]
The Legends and Myths of Sweet Hollow and Mount Misery: Part III, Research on the asylums of Mount Misery and Sweet Hollow
Legends abound on Mount Misery, perhaps none so popular as those of the asylums which supposedly stood there in the past. Take a look at the facts and decide for yourself, the truth behind one of Long Island’s most famous urban legends, from the Gothic Curiosity Cabinet.
